There is in the general public a growing attention towards the protection of the environment and an increasing awareness to issues related to energy. It has become a priority for some people to minimize their overall energy consumption, by e.g. using more energy-efficient appliances and/or travelling using energy-responsible means of transportation. Consumers know that energy can be produced using various energy sources, including renewable sources of energy. Renewable sources of energy are considered more respectful of the environment because they derive from natural processes that are continually replenished such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat.
However, it is hard for the consumers to monitor if and to what extent renewable energies are parts of the energy currently provided to them. Moreover, energy is usually provided to a “grid” (i.e. energy network) by several suppliers across countries, from various sources, some being renewable energies and some being non-renewable energies and each with various degrees of carbon emissions generated. An attempt to live a more environmentally responsible lifestyle results in a relatively unclear combination of types of energies supporting this lifestyle. In this context, it becomes increasingly hard to assess how a consumer's effort towards an environmentally friendly lifestyle accounts for in terms of environmental impact.
Existing systems have tried to address the issue of transparency of energy composition. US20120173034A1 provides an electric power visualization device for a household which visualizes content of electric power for an input-side electric power or load-side electric power in an electric power management system which receives electric power generated by a plurality of power generation methods as the input-side electric power and supplies to a load as the load-side electric power based on the input-side electric power, comprising a display unit which classifies the input-side electric power or the load-side electric power into generated electric power of each of the power generation methods, and displays with different display methods for each classification of the power generation method.
US2010235008A1 discloses a method for determining carbon credits earned as a result of a control event in which power is reduced to at least one service point serviced by a utility.
However, these existing solutions work only on energy consumed at one point of consumption in the energy grid and do not help in assessing energy stored in an energy storage.
Energy stored in the storage is most of the time not connected to a point of consumption in the energy grid. Indeed, the relative merit of e.g. choosing to drive an electrical vehicle instead of an internal combustion engine vehicle involves a higher level of complexity as the vehicle is most of the time disconnected from the energy grid. Consumers are entitled to be provided with a means to understand what energy types are involved in a system (e.g. a vehicle) operating on energy stored in an energy storage.